News: Iranian society

Iran regime's desperate censoring of cyberspace

The Attorney General of Iran’s regime: not managing our cyberspace will lead to things getting worse than they already are.

These words were revealed by Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, shortly after the statement of the deputy of cyberspace (Javad Javidnia) who earlier announced the judicial orders behind Instagram’s filtering.

Javidnia had earlier revealed that he was planning to take control of Instagram because “its content are against our country’s laws and ethics”.

Montazeri on the other hand, also claimed that “cyberspace is the source of crime”; according to him, “because the schemes of the enemies have failed one after another, they’re now targeting our culture via cyber platforms”. He also expressed his dissatisfaction with insufficient tools to fight these “schemes”.

Moreover, a rather vague warning was also issued to Iranian celebrities at around the same time, by the Attorney General; advising them to abide by “godly rules” and reminding them not to ever cross any “red lines”; adding that whoever “mocks Islamic values and ignores our warnings, will have to face our Judicial system”.

Following the filtering of Facebook and Telegram in Iran, Instagram and Twitter gained a lot of popularity amongst man users including Iranian celebrities who are also active on these platforms.

The secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, Abolhossein Firouzabadi, had earlier (in August last year) threatened that if Instagram doesn’t “cooperate, it will end up just like Telegram”. Not expanding any further on what he meant by “cooperation”.